Loved the book, but I still gotta agree with SJ. Ewan's writing is a bit self-conscious. Plus, your post made me laugh.

Blade Runner

The Godfather

The Silence of the Lambs

Children of Men

Stand by Me

Any LeCarre adaptation with Sir Alec Guiness as Smiley

Mary Poppins

A Clockwork Orange

My Left Foot

The Lion in Winter

The Exorcist

BBC's Pride and Prejudice

Oh, and I'm really looking forward to The Diving Bell and Butterfly. My main point is that there have been absolutely excellent adaptations of books - and I'm a reader first and foremost. This film was clearly made with the philosphy that you can substitute money where imagination fails. It never works.

All I need is a small orange which has been stuck with several cloves. That and the smell of pine, or, in a pinch, juniper. Oh, and I love fairy lights, strung up on the tree, or even a bannister, or wherever is handy. Who needs gifts when there's oranges and clove and twinkly lights?

Merry X-mas!

Glenn's thorough, analytical muckraking exposes contradictions, hypocrisy, and disinformation that I could only spot if I had 22 hours a day to read the news (which is what I assume he does). I read every column, though I rarely post. I respect him as a journalist, a lawyer, and a human being. I hope that he doesn't leave Salon any time soon.

Oh and Cary Tennis...Where the heck is Cary Tennis? It's been, like a week of missing columns now - and I'm actually worried about his health after that heart attack scare last year. Plese explain.

For those too busy or lazy to follow the link - here's part 1:

By Melissa Roddy - Alternet

In the latter half of the movie, there is one big lie and one item of anti-Afghan propaganda. The lie is that U.S. support to the mujahiddin went only to the faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan leader who was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001. I spoke with Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, in 2002, at which time he called Massoud "a Russian collaborator." I find it disingenuous that Wilson and his Hollywood biographers now want to throw their arms around him. (Note: George Crile's book does not make this false claim.) Moreover, if this movie succeeds in convincing Americans that the U.S. support went to Ahmad Shah Massoud alone, it will have effectively let the CIA and Wilson off the hook for their contribution to the circumstances leading up to 9/11. During the 1980s, Wilson engineered the appropriation of approximately $3.5 billion to help the Afghans fight the Soviets. According to Milt Bearden, CIA chief of station to Pakistan, Massoud received less than 1 percent of it.

So, if Massoud was not receiving the $3.5 billion that Congress was sending, who was? There were seven factions based in Pakistan who were the recipients of American largesse, but about 40 percent of it went to a blood-thirsty, fundamentalist, loudly anti-American bastard named Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.

However, instead of using the resources the United States sent him to fight the Soviets, he frequently used them to fight his mujahiddin allies. It was Gulbaddin Hekmatyar who turned Kabul to rubble -- not the Soviets and not the Taliban. Gulbaddin Hekmatyar regularly rocketed his own capitol during his term of office as prime minister. Hekmatyar is renowned for having killed more Afghans than Soviets. He so habitually attacked his mujahiddin allies that many people suspected he was actually a Soviet agent.

Not only is Hekmatyar anti-American, but he and another anti-American fundamentalist, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, received lots of support during the 1980s from the Saudis. That support included cash and thousands of Arab volunteers, including a wealthy young engineer named Osama bin Laden. It was Hekmatyar and Sayaf who, with bin Laden, established terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why after 9/11, Wilson went on Fox News and said, "This was as much my fault as anybody's." He understood the link between U.S. support for these thugs and the events of that terrible day. But Wilson's mea culpa is not included in Charlie Wilson's War, nor is there any mention of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rasul Sayaf or Arab volunteers. Interestingly, Hekmatyar and the Arab volunteers did make an appearance in an earlier draft of the script, making it clear that their absence from the final cut was no oversight on the part of the filmmakers.

Getting back to Ahmad Shah Massoud ...

As it so happens, Massoud did not receive any financial support from the Saudis, because they mistakenly thought he was a Shia Muslim. He was Sunni. Nevertheless, he was not altogether displeased with the situation, because it meant he didn't have to deal with the Arab jihadis. This is one of several reasons why, had we actually supported Massoud and not Hekmatyar, there would have been no 9/11. To be sure, there were quite a few people during the 1980s, including several U.S. Senators and various journalists, trying to warn Wilson and the CIA that the consequences of supporting Hekmatyar would be globally catastrophic. In response the CIA would always throw up its hands, exclaiming, 'We have no control over the distribution. It's all handled by Pakistan, and the Pakistanis liked Massoud even less than the Saudis.